Tenant Power Melts ICE

Report from Bay Tenant TANC Talk, a publication from Tenant and Neighborhood Councils (TANC). See the full issue, here.

On May 1st 2025, TANC took the streets to celebrate International Workers Day with class siblings across the Bay Area and around the world. Bottomlined by our Tenants Against Policing (TAP) working group, dozens of tenant unionists raised handmade banners, chanted slogans of empowerment, then smashed a piñata of an Immigrant and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.) vehicle in front of an I.C.E. office to show our solidarity with communities under immediate attack.

May Day demonstrations in the United States often only fleetingly and ritualistically express commitment to class struggle. But we can center attacks on the working class in these celebrations. 2006’s Day Without an Immigrant / Great American Boycott memorably brought on strike and into the streets millions of immigrants and citizens to demand an end to the xenophobic assaults of the right-wing politicians in and outside the Bush Jr. administration.

Trump’s executive orders supercharge Bush Jr.’s (and Obama’s and Biden’s) anti-immigrant policies to terrorize residents foreign and domestic. His administration has black-bagged non-citizens for the crime of demanding an end to Israel’s US-backed genocide in Gaza; deported hundreds to indefinite detention in black sites off US soil; and promised to expand detention facilities domestically. Locally, the Department of Homeland Security may repurpose the Dublin Federal Correctional Institution and/or the nearby Travis Air Force Base for additional camps.

It is no surprise, then, that this year’s May Day centered defense of and solidarity with immigrant communities, workers, and neighbors. Recognizing the threats and cutting our losses from a previous campaign, I and other anti-police tenant organizers began meeting months before May to strategically shift from fighting a Cop City project in San Pablo to fighting detention facility expansion in the region. TAP’s planning pinpointed our goals for May Day:

1. Coalesce disparate organizing efforts. We wanted to gather organizers across Locals, as well as those new to the union entirely, and thought a clear action would aid collaboration.

2. Structure-test our outreach and connections with surrounding communities, identifying key organizers in neighborhoods throughout the region who could mobilize their neighbors.

3. Visibly represent TANC to make contact with prospective new union members at the march. So how did we do? We undoubtedly got to know and work with each other better, and brought outside organizers into the tenant union (1). We coordinated a powerful art build, made media to share, and led an outreach effort in Fruitvale facilitated by connections with a local restaurateur. TAP built a strong working group with unionists across the region, and we plan to keep up the momentum together.

Unfortunately, we did not mobilize many neighbors to join the march (2). But some organizers did mobilize and politicize communities outside the union. Specifically, special praise must be given to the Chinese Language Justice Mixer and Kevin (Central Local), one of its lead coordinators. After months of building relationships with leftist Mandarin speakers across the Bay Area, frequent mixer attendees painted banners and marched as a bloc on May Day. This translation of “third” spaces into political action is inspiring—building working class culture—and we hope to see such efforts replicated and expanded.

Finally, TANC unmistakably made an impression at the march (3). Thanks to preparations by West/North’s Kandake we shared dozens of granola bars and bottles of water with parched, hungry marchers. Central’s Ryder fired up a crowd of thousands before East of Lake’s Bri dangled our I.C.E.-van cardboard effigy for smashing. After hits by TANC, SEIU, and other community members, it broke, raining stickers, buttons, and ICEbreaker candies on the crowd. Youth grabbed the loot, beaming as they carried “Tenant Power Melts ICE” buttons by West/North’s Liv and stickers by Bri that read “Immigrant Communities Everywhere.” In short, we showed up and showed out.

In Assemblies, Local meetings, and informal conversations before, after, and during the march, TANC members unanimously shared that our union should have a presence at future May Days, so we conclude with lessons learned that we hope will shape the union and our future May Day celebrations:

– Connect with marchers outside our union. Tenants around the Bay Area are itching to fight back, and campaigns are already underway thanks to our outreach efforts at the march.

– Plan the next ask in advance. Shortly before May Day, TAP members spitballed how we could situate this May Day action in a longer campaign against I.C.E. expansion. High-profile actions should lead to intimate organizing conversations and opportunities to deepen relationships for struggle. We hope to plan and be party to efforts like town halls and popular assemblies where neighbors empower each other to proactively fight I.C.E. invasions in our communities.

– Our tenant councils must become structures of community defense that directly protect each other when I.C.E. and other agents come to snatch us, and who can sustain plans against state expansion in our backyards.

– From working group plans to Local actions. To make that a reality, members of the TAP working group will redouble efforts in our Locals. Some don’t have dense immigrant communities, but we can organize each other to support neighborhoods that do, and mobilize each other to fight the I.C.E. expansion that will come for us all.

May Day comes but once a year—it is through our union and our everyday efforts within it that we protect, support, and strengthen each other against bosses, landlords, and the forces that protect them.